Case Study - Qimarox

Fabory shortens lead times with vertical conveyor from Qimarox

Fabory Shortens Lead Times with Qimarox Vertical Conveyor
From its central warehouse in Tilburg, Fabory supplies customers across Europe with bolts, nuts, screws, and other fastening materials. To speed up the replenishment of stock in its miniload system, system integrator TBWB developed an automated depalletizing and transport solution featuring two Qimarox components: the Prorunner mk5 vertical conveyor and the Pallet Dispenser PD1.

Fabory stocks more than 100,000 products in its 30,000 m² distribution center. As the company continued to grow, it built a new narrow-aisle warehouse adjacent to the central facility. Autonomous warehouse trucks retrieve pallets from bulk storage and deliver them to a depalletizing robot, which places the boxes onto a conveyor system feeding the miniload warehouse.

A key challenge was bridging a height difference of 4.5 meters between the two warehouse areas. The Qimarox Prorunner mk5 solves this by lifting boxes 3.5 meters vertically and transferring them onto the conveyor leading to the miniload system. The compact conveyor handles up to 600 boxes per hour while maintaining the stability of the load.

“The boxes can weigh up to 28 kilograms, and larger bolts may roll inside during transport,” explains Maarten Scheffers, Supply Chain Improvement Engineer at Fabory. “With vertical transport, there is no risk of boxes deforming or sliding, which could happen with inclined or spiral conveyors.”

The modular design of the Prorunner mk5 has also proven valuable. When process changes required an additional meter of lifting height, Qimarox simply added extra sections without replacing the machine.

Fabory selected the Qimarox solutions based on recommendations from TBWB and previous positive experiences. “We have been using a Qimarox palletizing machine for almost twenty years, so we had complete confidence in the quality and reliability,” says Ronald van den Dungen, Engineer at Fabory.